Word.ws English Dictionary

Goodhart's law

Goodhart's law proper noun: the idea that, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure; originally, "as soon as the government attempts to regulate any particular set of financial assets, these become unreliable as indicators of economic trends".

Proper noun

Goodhart's law

  1. The idea that, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure; originally, "as soon as the government attempts to regulate any particular set of financial assets, these become unreliable as indicators of economic trends".

Origin of Goodhart's law

Named after British economist Charles Goodhart (1936–), who originated it.

Questions about Goodhart's law

What does Goodhart's law mean?
Goodhart's law means the idea that, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure; originally, "as soon as the government attempts to regulate any particular set of financial assets, these become unreliable as indicators of economic trends".
What part of speech is Goodhart's law?
Goodhart's law is a proper noun.

Words near Goodhart's law in the dictionary

  1. Goodgame
  2. Goodgames
  3. Goodhand
  4. goodhap
  5. Goodhart
  6. Goodhart's law
  7. Goodharts
  8. Goodheart
  9. goodhearted
  10. goodheartedly
  11. goodheartedness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Goodhart's law (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Goodhart's law.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/goodhart%27s_law. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.